AST Wishlist for 5.0

Im kinda a new AST but a friend of mine teaches me and she's fallen out of love with the job because of How Easy it's become after the changes to malefic 3, She loved the choices that came with meaningful clipping and it allowed her to feel rewarded with proper optimization. While i personally love the changes to malefic 3 and hope they stay. One thing we both agreed on is that, the skill floor for this job is far too low and in the hands of RNG

A lesser skilled ast will out preform simply because they got more Crit Lord of Crowns. I think something about this should be done as RNG shouldn't be what defines the highest tiers by so much, some level of skill should really be involved the the process. Also Change lady of crowns into A small and potent regen would help it be more useful for Auto's. Having a random heal isn't very useful when you have to calculate for it not being there all the time

I love AST and I would definitely call it my second main but I have to say that even though I do like the flexibility that comes with sects I do hate how it does feel paste on and because the dynamic of heals/shields is so important in this game it limited what AST could of been and what others healers could be. That's why I'm also in the mindset of getting rid of Sects all together and focusing more in it's cards.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

As for the cards themselves, ive thinking:
Bole and Balance: Shields, same as nocturnal.
Spear and Arrow: Bonus 10% damage reduction.
Spire and Ewer: Regen, same as diurnal.

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I actually like this a lot but I would do without the 10% damage reduction and instead have Bole, Arrow & Ewer all be regens and Balance, Spear, and Spire be shields. My reasoning for this is because of the cards associated elements, the former 3 being WHM associated elements make sense to be Diurnal aspected cards and the latter 3 being BLM associated elements would be Nocturnal aspected cards. Aspected Benefic and Helios would still be a part or AST's kit but would now burn your cards to apply the effects. I'd also remove their front healing and have them just apply the regen or shield. Potencies of the regen and shield would also be reduced since you want strong regens or shields then you should go with WHM and SCH respectively. AST's main focus should be it's cards and party buffing utility.

I would also like to see a new ability that allow us to swap a card for it's pair so if you pulled a Bole instead of redrawing and potentially getting one of the other 5 cards you instead would get it's pair the Balance. This would also come in handy for when you want to place a shield but pulled a Diurnal card, use the ability and boom Nocturnal card to place your shield.

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Originally Posted by AvenoMatt

I'd also remove their front healing and have them just apply the regen or shield. Potencies of the regen and shield would also be reduced since you want strong regens or shields then you should go with WHM and SCH respectively. AST's main focus should be it's cards and party buffing utility.

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...are you trying to kill everyone?
It's not a healer if it can't heal, the 'pure support role' doesn't exist, AST is still a healer and has to compete with the other two/three.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

...are you trying to kill everyone?
It's not a healer if it can't heal, the 'pure support role' doesn't exist, AST is still a healer and has to compete with the other two/three.

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I didn't say remove all of it's healing just the upfront healing from it's aspected heals. It would still have benefic, benefic II, helios, and all of it's ogcd, maybe even focusing more of it's ogcd by lowering the cooldown of essential dignity or doing what another player suggested and lower the cooldown on draw so we can use minor arcana more often.

And honestly I doubt AST having weaker shields or regens would make it less desirable since it still can heal and provide it's rdps.

In a recent interview at Paris, Yoshi-P made this comment when talking about the new Gunbreaker job:

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I don't think it'd be good for the three tanks to form a "triangle", so maybe we'll balance them by having two MTs and two OTs, or make them capable of both.

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If a fourth healer is introduced soon and S-E continues to develop the idea that there should be a "Main healer" and "shield healer", then I hope Yoshi-P takes the bolded section above and balancing two main healers and two shield healers. I wouldn't mind extending the shield healer idea to be "Mitigation healer w/ support utility" and thus pushing AST to be balanced against SCH in 5.0 - taking away the idea of HoTs vs Mitigation for AST and be easier to balance overall. This will also allow the 4th healer to be balanced as a pure healer against WHM (hopefully).

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Originally Posted by AvenoMatt

And honestly I doubt AST having weaker shields or regens would make it less desirable since it still can heal and provide it's rdps.

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Well thing is it actually did all the way back during the 3.x. The cards weren't strong enough to offset the healing disparity that AST had back then. In fact it took patches of buffs to make people even consider WHM/AST (3.3 and the infamous 3.4) cause SCH just did everything better than a noct astro before 3.4. For comparison sake back then
before 3.4 noct astro aspected benefic total potency 603.75 (262.5 heal/341.25) compared to adlo 600. The only advantages were it was instant and cheaper. Come 3.4, Noct sect got buffed from 5 percent healing to 10 percent healing and the shield percentage got buffed from 130 to 170 percent. Only then, did I see an increase in astros (of course there was also that stupid buff to balance which was the main reason).

Edit: FFlogs isn't really a good metric but I still remember back then checking the stuff on A8s during the midas tier. Of the hundreds of groups that cleared before 3.3, you had only 2 that were logged as a ast/whm group. SOme may not logged their clear but it gives a good idea back when there were hundreds of clears with whm/sch or sch/ast but few whm/ast clears. There was a reason they buffed the shields in 3.3 with aspected helios being increased to 120 percent of the heal and then the huge full buff to noct in 3.4.

Edit: Not defending it either, I do wish the explore with the cards a bit more and tried to differentiate with the sects themselves. However, having been through hw and the tumultuous cycle back then with whm vs ast since SCH was king back then and knowing what SE has done, it just wouldn't be very likely sadly.

Yeah but a problem ppl have with AST now is that it's healing and cards are too strong of a combination. It's not as bad as it was at the end of 3.x but it still ends up out classing WHM.

Also wasn't the issue for AST more that it's overall healing, Benefic, Benefic II and Helios, was just too weak not just it's a Aspected heals.

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Originally Posted by AvenoMatt

Yeah but a problem ppl have with AST now is that it's healing and cards are too strong of a combination. It's not as bad as it was at the end of 3.x but it still ends up out classing WHM.

Also wasn't the issue for AST more that it's overall healing, Benefic, Benefic II and Helios, was just too weak not just it's a Aspected heals.

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Ya I just using noct aspected benefic as example as why no one wanted to use noct astro. Ya before 3.07 it had weaker heals in everything. the cards now aren't necessarily stronger but you have more control over the rng now with sleeve draw and minor arcana but I would say they've backed themselves into corner and would probably be best to take the route that they're thinking with the tanks now.

New Spire effect: Reduces MP costs for target by 10%.
This would compliment it's counterpart in Ewer, while Ewer would recover lost MP, Spire would preserve MP, and with TP merging into MP this will benefit anyone.

Sects effect cards: Current effects are present in Diurnal Sect*, new effects for Nocturnal Sect target enemies instead of party.
Balance: Enemy deals 8% less damage for 15s.
Bole: Enemy takes 8% more damage for 15s. (does not stack with Trick attack)
Arrow: Enemy’s attack speed is reduced by 10% for 15s. (but certain special moves and phase changes are unaffected)
Spear: Enemy cannot deal critical hits for 15s.
Ewer: Inflicts a 50 potency DoT for 15s.
Spire: Enemy takes 10% of the damage they inflict on any party members for 15s.

The point of this is to allow dual-AST compositions to use their cards without worrying about overwriting the other’s effects.
The duration is nerfed to 15s for Nocturnal effects as they could be more OP than party buffs, with Bole/Balance nerfed in potency to 8% as well.
*Diurnal Balance and Bole also nerfed to 8% effect.

I think this would also see Nocturnal Sect favoured more over Diurnal in some ways, due to an Enhanced Bole being more effective than Trick attack. (12% more damage over 15s) Would be a neat way of improving the currently inferior Nocturnal Sect.

Can draw and redraw please be reduced to 20s cd, this would be enough for me

Problem SE made for themselves was making AST to be WHM mk2 on introduction. Since then they’ve tried to move it away, but they’ll always have the issue now with people playing one or the other.
Anyway for AST- sort the card mechanics out to reflect real time use in raids when your attention is on a whole host of boss and environment mechanics. It still looks like an add on rng gimmick used to say I’m not a whm.

If I could have anything, I would want an ability of falling stars that attacks and/or heals with randomly placed falling stars (essentially, creates momentary (like, 1 second) tiny aoe circles (like, maybe as small as a Lalafell's body in radius) that deal damage (/and heal) in minute amounts, for a limited time, which can be set up within a set distance of the player, and within a possibly large maximum radius to prevent too many stars from stacking upon themselves to damage (/and heal) too much in a specific area). Long cooldown, of course, but I crave something like that, and would be staring at the cooldown timer and counting the seconds.

Frankly, though, if I just get a shooting/falling star spell of sorts again (and not this burst of sparkles that they turned Malefic III into), I'd be pretty happy.

Or, maybe, the return of ability cooldown reduction, possibly in the place of Spire's current TP refresh (since TP is going away).
Or bringing the PvP versions of the Lady and Lord of Crowns into PvE, that'd be neat and make me think about going after Minor Arcana more.
Zodiac related abilities/spells? Though I've not put much thought into what sort of spells.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

I think this would also see Nocturnal Sect favoured more over Diurnal in some ways, due to an Enhanced Bole being more effective than Trick attack. (12% more damage over 15s) Would be a neat way of improving the currently inferior Nocturnal Sect.

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The problem about Noct AST is not its potency, it's just that shielding in general is less powerful than regens. SCH is not the prefered healer for its shields, but because of its oGCD heals and DPS / raid contribution. For example, unless a fight requires a special shield value, you could go WHM / diurnal AST and survive just fine.
Trying to make double AST viable like you did is valuable but it's far too OP like this, even if the enemy debuffs are shorter.

I like your new Spire, but I think it kinda messes up with some rotations (I just think about BLM AStral Fire and Foul / Thundercloud timings and PLD Requiescat / Holy Spirit right now), which revolve around X number of spells cast fitting into a buff or whatever, and being out of MP forces you out of this phase. But I don't know how detrimental this would be... seems okay.
Maybe MP will be consumed differently in 5.0 for other classes so it could work anyway.

I just want all healers (not just AST) to get back the utility tools we had before the cross class ability rework. And not as a cross class skill like...bring back disable and make it AST's version of a weakening mechanic to combine with other mitigation for harsh tank busters or party busters. Idk how anyone else feels on the subject, but one of my favorite things about mitigation healing back in 2.0/3.0 was cheesing tank busters with a combination of spells/skills. That satisfied me far more than this ABC damage dealing side show nonsense I have to do when there's no need for my support.

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Originally Posted by Mansion

The problem about Noct AST is not its potency, it's just that shielding in general is less powerful than regens. SCH is not the prefered healer for its shields, but because of its oGCD heals and DPS / raid contribution. For example, unless a fight requires a special shield value, you could go WHM / diurnal AST and survive just fine.
Trying to make double AST viable like you did is valuable but it's far too OP like this, even if the enemy debuffs are shorter.

I like your new Spire, but I think it kinda messes up with some rotations (I just think about BLM AStral Fire and Foul / Thundercloud timings and PLD Requiescat / Holy Spirit right now), which revolve around X number of spells cast fitting into a buff or whatever, and being out of MP forces you out of this phase. But I don't know how detrimental this would be... seems okay.
Maybe MP will be consumed differently in 5.0 for other classes so it could work anyway.

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How do PLD and BLM deal with refresh?

I've been playing around with the idea of the draw being divided into two skills that provide a set of Fortune (buffs) or a set of Misfortunes (debuffs)

Something like:
Astral Draw:
Balance- 10% Direct Hit
Spire- 10% Crit Hit
Arrow- 10% Skill/Spell Speed

Umbral Draw:
Spear- 2% Physical Vulnerability
Ewer- 2% Magic Vulnerability
Bole- 2% Damage Reduction

And then altering the way the current draw utilities work, Royal Road and Spread only working with Astral Draws, Redraw working on the last draw used, and Minor Arcana having a guaranteed effect based on the draw it uses (Lady for Astral, Lord for Umbral) Lord would get a damage nerf but would also be used to refresh the duration of their debuff, so the idea would be you pick the debuff you need, then spend the rest on Lords for damage and debuff maintenance. And then a cooldown that temporarily augments the debuff to 10% for a few seconds then granting immunity to the boost for a minute (to prevent cheesing) Ofc it would be a balancing issue without proper restrictions, but having buffs and a debuff to maintain might be a nice gameplay flow.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

How do PLD and BLM deal with refresh?

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I think there's a difference between a small mana tick every 3 seconds and 10% of your mana cost off each spell in a short window. I'm not saying it's bad, but I think Refresh has a lesser value than your Spire. Especially with the AST tweaks of being able to Royal Road this card.

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Originally Posted by Mansion

I think there's a difference between a small mana tick every 3 seconds and 10% of your mana cost off each spell in a short window. I'm not saying it's bad, but I think Refresh has a lesser value than your Spire. Especially with the AST tweaks of being able to Royal Road this card.

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I don't think it would really effect PLD or BLM rotations.
10% off of each spell cost isn't going to give you the opportunity to extend that rotation unless it effects at least 10 spells. at 15s duration, that's only about 5/6 spells/skills you're going to fit into that window. It'll just be inconsequential to those rotations, but it will greatly benefit other casters/healers, and depending on how the MP/TP merge works, potentially most other jobs too, and DRK will probably get a huge benefit from it.
At the very least, it won't be nearly as bad as giving Arrow to a NIN.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

New Spire effect: Reduces MP costs for target by 10%.
This would compliment it's counterpart in Ewer, while Ewer would recover lost MP, Spire would preserve MP, and with TP merging into MP this will benefit anyone.

Sects effect cards: Current effects are present in Diurnal Sect*, new effects for Nocturnal Sect target enemies instead of party.
Balance: Enemy deals 8% less damage for 15s.
Bole: Enemy takes 8% more damage for 15s. (does not stack with Trick attack)
Arrow: Enemy’s attack speed is reduced by 10% for 15s. (but certain special moves and phase changes are unaffected)
Spear: Enemy cannot deal critical hits for 15s.
Ewer: Inflicts a 50 potency DoT for 15s.
Spire: Enemy takes 10% of the damage they inflict on any party members for 15s.

The point of this is to allow dual-AST compositions to use their cards without worrying about overwriting the other’s effects.
The duration is nerfed to 15s for Nocturnal effects as they could be more OP than party buffs, with Bole/Balance nerfed in potency to 8% as well.
*Diurnal Balance and Bole also nerfed to 8% effect.

I think this would also see Nocturnal Sect favoured more over Diurnal in some ways, due to an Enhanced Bole being more effective than Trick attack. (12% more damage over 15s) Would be a neat way of improving the currently inferior Nocturnal Sect.

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Some additional ideas for Noct Sect.

Nocturnal Sect Minor Arcana:
Queen of Coins: Bestows a HoT on target party member for 21s.
King of Coins: Inflicts a DoT on enemy for 21s.

Celestial Opposition additional effect: Extends debuffs inflicted by yourself by 5s.
Time Dilation additional effect: Resets the value of HP-shields.
(e.g. if a 3000 HP shield is erected, they suffer 2000 dmg, then TD would reset that back to 3000, but will have no effect if the shield is already fully depleted. Hopefully the indications that changes to the battle system UI will display HP shields will make this easier to manage.)

These would give Nocturnal Sect an extra HoT it can use but on RNG, and a way to modify its shields through TD.
I thought this was the most effective way to have you enhance the effect of Noct shields, but would be too OP to have two skills like this, likewise two skills extending the duration of debuffs would be OP if you could essentially stretch a Trick attack out to 25s.

I'm still leveling my AST, but so far I'm disappointed that we have no means to spread Combust to enemies, or at least a way to deal DoT damage in multi-target without just spamming Combust all the time. WHM has Aero III, SCH has Bane and Miasma II, AST has nothing.
Last time I brought it up, it was mentioned to me that the concern was making Healer DoTs "unique". Perhaps then, Combust III could do as the name says... and cause the target to continuously combust for partial radial damage? With a limitation to one target, of course.

Beyond that though, my most realistic expectation is more control over the deck, short of picking exactly the card you want. I wonder what they'll do to replace the Spire's TP generation...

I was also very surprised that AST doesn't have any enemy debuff effects, given its Time Mage motifs and emphasis on influencing fate -- surely some fates are going to be worse. I'll grant that vulnerability may be a bit out of the jurisdiction of a support-type healer (and more the area of SCH anyway), but surely effects like reducing enemy damage or (more fittingly) speed would at least fall under their purview as a means of damage prevention and making heals more efficient.

Likewise, why is "Celestial Stasis" considered a spell so strong even we don't know it yet, if crowd control effects are presently useless in a raid context and best saved for leveling anyway? It's just surprising to me that WHM gets Sleep while our Ersatz Time Mage doesn't get its trademark Stop while leveling, or at least some form of single-target immobilize. Something like, "The target can't attack but is immune to damage until the timer ends or spell is recast" maybe?

Just seems like the "ultimate time magic" from a healing standpoint would be something like Reraise -- twist fate around to undo an event before it happens.
Which, come to think of it, would be the perfect way to cheese out reaching the Seventh Gate, actually...

If this thread isn't quite dead yet, a few things that also hit me that I'm surprised haven't been done with Astrologian's borrowed Time Mage elements:

• Damage delay effects: Turn a direct hit on your ally into a DoT effect, buying you more time to heal it away.
• Damage suppression effects: Stop time for your ally, making them briefly immune to damage for as long as they stand still.
• Damage reversal effects: Cast once to snapshot your ally's HP and MP. Cast again to turn back time for your ally, rewinding their HP and MP to the snapshotted state.

I just want cool looking animations and for nocturnal sect to be less of a mp dump.